


Legacies.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Series: Petya 'verse - All Petya Vorkosigan Fics [5]
Category: Vorkosigan Saga - Lois McMaster Bujold
Genre: AU, If you're privileged enough you can get away with murder, Marriage of Convenience, Suspected honor killing, Suspected murder-called-suicide, Suspected non-consensual cross-generation incest, Suspected torture, Time Period: Reign of Gregor Vorbarra, Time Period: Vorkosigan Regency, You won't like me when I'm angry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-29
Updated: 2010-09-29
Packaged: 2017-10-12 07:25:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/122374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Days before the end of the Regency, Aral and Petya talk.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Legacies.

Of all the powers that come with being regent, Aral has found the power of knowledge to be the most seductive. But if there is anything he has learned in his years, it is the dangers of the misuse of power. Ezar taught him that lesson well.

And in a week, Ezar's grandson will come of age and the regency will end. Aral sits behind his desk in his office in Vorhartung Castle and stares at two datachips. This may be his last chance to have full, uncensored access to either of them. He has had this access for sixteen years and has never used it.

He can feel the time counting down and he turns to the more prominent one. _Ges Vorrutyer_ is written on the label in Simon's familiar handwriting. Below it are the dates and the security classification. All well and good. Lord Vorkosigan has a right to this one, a natural one based on service and security and a hundred other reasons, all equally lies.

The second file is his son's.

When he had become Lord Regent, Negri had come to him with the Ministry of Political Education's file on his son. Aral had gone through it as quickly as he could stomach it, and at a snail's pace he read about his son's habits, his son's weaknesses, his son's opinions, he had read transcripts of conversations and perused his son's academic record. And he had, with his knuckles white from the force of trying to reach through the screen and strangle more political officers, watched his son's fast-penta interrogation.

There had been two names all over the file, and Aral could well imagine the conversations that had been occurring around those notes and memos, that tug-of-war between Serg and Ges over Petya. Serg had wanted him killed, wanted a training accident manufactured, had wanted that valuable hostage executed as a message to his father. Ges had wanted...

What Ges had wanted was much more lethal.

And unmentioned in the Ministry file had been if Ges had succeeded. Aral had never asked Petya. Every time he thought he might, he thought better of it, had rationalized that there were things a father was not meant to know, no matter that, if it had occurred, it would certainly have been his fault. If Petya wanted to keep it a secret, then Aral would give him that privacy.

Aral's been telling himself this for a decade and a half. Ruefully, he thinks, he hasn't been telling himself well enough, because if he had, he never would have ordered these files from Simon. And now he faces the coward's choice.

If there is a source other than Petya that can give Aral the answers he seeks, it is Petya's uncensored ImpSec file.

Aral stares at the file for a long, unseeing moment. Then he activates his comm and tells the armsman at Vorkosigan House to ask Petya to see him at his earliest convenience. And then Aral returns to his staring contest with the two seemingly innocuous datachips.

Petya arrives a half hour later, with the only sign that Aral had caught him at an inconvenient time being the slightly-scuffed nature of his boots. Aral checks the time; Petya must have been caught at dinner and had needed to dress. Petya is on home leave for the Emperor's Birthday, after all. He'd been wearing civvies when Aral had seen him this morning, not dress greens.

Petya salutes him. "Sir." Then he notices what is on Aral's desk and his mouth sets into a very firm line that Aral knows well from his own mirror.

"Sit down, Petya," Aral says.

Petya doesn't move. "No, sir," he says shortly. "May I be excused, sir?"

"No." Aral considers his son. "At ease, Captain." Petya gives him a very suspicious look, but shifts his stance. "What do you think I'm about to request from you?"

"You've reviewed those files, sir," Petya says. "So, I expect, my resignation. You will have it by morning, sir. Or if you have already written it for me, I will sign it immediately."

"I haven't looked at them, Petya," Aral says.

That seems to bring Petya up short. Then he visibly shakes it off. "What?"

"I haven't looked at them," Aral repeats.

"I don't understand." Petya's left thumb starts rubbing circles on his right wrist. He stops himself immediately, but not before Aral can recognize and catalogue that nervous gesture as a fast-penta souvenir, courtesy of Serg. "Why do you have them if you haven't reviewed them?" He licks his lips. "I...I would prefer not to stand here while you did so. Sir."

"Something you don't want to face?" Aral asks gently.

"Oh." Petya blinks. "Are you...giving me an opportunity to come forward and confess, sir? I do not think what I have done is in any way criminal, but... and I have not considered it dishonorable. To anyone. Anyone involved. Or to you. Or the Emperor, or...," he breaks off, and then says, carefully, "I am not Ges Vorrutyer, sir. Despite what my file may... despite what my file may lead you to believe, the patterns are not... the patterns may be _similar_ , I confess I don't know enough of his crimes to know if they are identical, and I know that criminal pathology is a study of Lady Vorkosigan's, Betan criminal pathology, specifically, but I don't imagine that--"

"Petya," Aral interrupts. "There is no need to panic, boy."

"No, I think there is excellent need to panic," Petya snaps, then comes up short and stands to attention. His fingers are pushing against each other, Aral notes, trying to fight their way into a soothing repetitive motion. "Serg ordered me tortured and Ges stopped him, you _know_ that, you've seen that order, and you of all people know Ges's methods," and then Petya actually bites his lip hard, but too late, of course, and the blood drains out of his face.

"Ges Vorrutyer," Aral says carefully, "enjoyed creating situations where he would put a younger man in a position of obligation to him, and then exploiting it to twist that man into a perversion of honor."

"Which in your case meant setting up my mother's suicide," Petya says. "I've known about this for thirty years, sir. You cannot shock me with your sins. I can only, it seems, shock you with mine."

Oh, let him not shock his son with his suspicions, with his fears that it had been no suicide, that Ges's had been the hand to kill own sister, or, perhaps worse, it had been the province of the grandfathers, of Count Vorkosigan dispensing unilateral Vorkosigan justice to defend Vorkosigan honor, or old Count Vorrutyer, defending the Vorrutyer name in force. One suicide, but so many possible murderers, so many suspicions of guilt. May his son never find out. May his son remain ignorant. Petya has too many nightmares; Aral would happily take a wormhole jump to hell to never give his so very solemn, so very careful son more.

And when had his son stopped smiling around him? Aral can remember when Petya's eyes had been lit up with laughter, but he can't remember the last time he'd seen them that way. Petya had been such a happy baby. When he'd been an infant, Aral had been struck by Petya's soft, dark curls, so like Therese's, and his laughing brown eyes, so like Ges's. Ges had fed that doubt, whispered to him that the boy looked more Vorrutyer than Vorkosigan. Had Petya somehow heard those doubts in his father's voice? Had he made himself more serious to become more Vorkosigan? Old Piotr was never a man for jokes, and the Vorrutyers were infamous for their peculiar sense of humor. Had his son chosen to model himself on old Piotr, to make himself Vorkosigan in temperament, if not necessarily a Vorkosigan in fact?

Or had he taken his cues from Aral instead and learned to hide everything that made him Vorrutyer, to avoid Ges's attentions? How much of his son is, even now, even sixteen years after Ges's death, still a remnant of what Ges and Serg had done to him?

"Petya," Aral asks, "and I will only ask you this once, and if you like, we will never speak of this again, but I have to know. Did he hurt you?"

"Did he hurt _me_?" Petya sputters. "You have my entire adult life sitting in front of you and you want to know if Uncle Ges hurt me?"

"Yes," Aral answers simply.

Petya looks away, and takes a deep breath. Then he looks Aral in the eye. "No. Sir. He didn't have time. Escobar intervened."

 _So I was in time. In one thing, at least, I succeeded in time._ "Cordelia," Aral says, "once asked me if you would be upset that she was widely rumored to have killed Ges. I assured her that you would not mind in the slightest."

"I was _grateful_ ," Petya says viciously. "Grateful that my mother's brother was dead because it meant I was safe from him. And I was grateful that the Emperor's son was dead, because it meant I was safe from him as well. I was grateful for all those deaths because it meant I was safe, and if you think that is an easy emotion, sir, I would like to disabuse you of that notion immediately."

Aral wonders if Petya would have been grateful for Aral's death at Escobar. Aral's legacy has been as much of a blessing to Petya as Piotr's has been to Aral. "Honor is rarely simple," Aral says instead. "Or easy."

"So I have been informed," Petya non-answers. "I do not feel as though I have acted dishonorably. You may, of course, disagree, as my father and my liege lord, because my honor reflects yours."

"I am the last person to lecture you on honor and sex," Aral says. "Based on what I have been informed of from Simon's briefings, you have been remarkably circumspect and discreet. Much more than I had been."

"The circumstances," Petya says lowly, "are entirely, entirely different. This is who I am, sir. What I am. These are not the actions of a grief-struck young man who is consorting with poor influences and shaming his family name and ignoring his son--," Petya looks down at the floor and Aral watches as Petya's jaw works as he swallows the rest of it.

"Are you still angry with me for that?" Aral asks.

"I will probably never entirely stop," Petya answers honestly.

"That's fair," Aral allows. "I will probably never stop being angry at myself for it."

"I have never," Petya says, "hurt anyone. I have tried... I have done my best to warn them, that it might hurt their careers or their reputations. I have tried to be as honest as possible so that I would earn equal honesty in return. I have done my best to learn from negative examples and steer clear. I... I would like to believe that I have never used my rank to coerce anyone, as Uncle Ges so clearly did and enjoyed doing, but honesty forces me, sir, to admit that I can never be entirely certain that I have not, in some unconscious way, done so. But it was never my intention."

"Petya, I'm not accusing you of criminal activity," Aral says. "And, as your father, I would prefer it if you didn't accuse yourself."

"It has to be in my thoughts," Petya objects. "At all times. It can't not be, not with being so much a Vorrutyer and, excuse me, sir, but so much a Vorkosigan. We have too many monsters in our history for me to ever forget that I could be one of them. That I might already be and simply have not had the opportunity to show it."

"Do you consider me a monster?" Aral asks, curious.

Petya hesitates a moment too long. "You killed a man with your bare hands, sir, and killed two men on one day in duels over my mother's honor. Honor that you did not value yourself, but you killed them for it. Yes, sir, at times, I have thought you a monster."

 _If he ever discovers the truth about Escobar, it will not simply be at times. It will be always._ Aral breathes in slowly. "That's fair, Petya," he says gently. "Monstrous acts do a monster make?"

"Not...entirely, sir," Petya says. "We may as well ask Miles to tell us about our views of mutants. He is too close to the prejudice to see dispassionately. He may see clearly, but it is not objectively. And I am too close to monsters, sir, to pass any true judgment. There is always a fear that I am one of that number."

"Miles isn't a mutant," Aral says.

"In the same way you are not a monster, sir?" Petya asks, and Aral understands entirely how Petya has gotten so many damn commendations and demerits, for the same conversation. "The outside view is our reputation. Truth is not necessarily important."

"Reputation doesn't matter," Aral says. "It's what others know about you. But what you know about you, deep in your heart, that is honor."

"And in your heart," Petya asks, "do you think yourself a monster?"

Aral admits, "there have been times when I have."

Petya takes a deep breath. "Sir, _has_ it affected anyone's career? I couldn't make them promises that it wouldn't. There was... there was an ImpSec officer, I was worried it would hurt his promotion chances. The others, in Ops and other departments, I knew that they probably wouldn't care, but ImpSec, it could be seen as a pretty clear conflict of interest. He wasn't in my security detail," Petya says quickly, "or near it at all, he was in Komarran Affairs--"

"Allegre," Aral supplies the name. "Yes, I did read _that_ file. Simon insisted."

Petya grimaces. "It wasn't about that. At all. Anything like it."

"No," Aral agrees, "I did realize that you'd probably already decided to have sex with him before you deduced that he was a relative of the armsman who killed Prince Ivan. I don't suspect you of having such macabre ideas of revenge." He pauses. "And, as your father only, Petya, not your commander, I would like to know: what _are_ your intentions? Will you be bringing one of your conquests home some day?"

"I prefer to not consider the political complications, sir. If anything were to become...serious, then I would be unable to ignore the inevitable ensuring ramifications. If I may be blunt, sir," Petya says and Aral wishes that his son had never learned how to be anything but blunt, "it would ruin any developing relationship, to expect them to return to Vorbarr Sultana and to this circus, to require them to enter into the Vorkosigan milieu as the price for being in a relationship with me. It would doom any of them, anyone I cared about, to be known as another ill-thought-out Vorkosigan love match. Cordelia is Betan enough not to care what others say about her or about you. I and other officers in the Emperor's service do not have that luxury."

In other words, Aral thinks, this is the only thing Petya has that is his own, and not the collective property of his father's government, and would like it to remain that way. "I have tried to give you the privacy you requested," Aral says, and is rewarded by Petya almost actually smiling, "despite me potentially knowing more than you about the men you've been--"

"Seeing socially," Petya offers blandly.

"Euphemisms change," Aral notes wryly, "reality rarely does."

"All I ask," Petya says, "is for you to keep ignoring it and let me manage my own affairs. There is no rush at all on me producing an heir the proper way." He smiles uncomfortably. "A requirement of reality that I try not to dwell on, sir."

"My god," Aral says wonderingly, "is that what you think my marriage to your mother was? What you think you are? A requirement I had to fill?"

"Your second marriage was a love match, sir," Petya says, and he is staring at a point on the wall nowhere near Aral's head. "This is reality that I am aware of."

"I-- I cannot claim to have loved your mother the way I love Cordelia," Aral gets out, and wonders how Petya had maneuvered him onto this subject, onto talking uncomfortably about his own love affairs rather than talking uncomfortably about Petya's, "but what I felt for her was _never_ obligation or requirement. I loved her in the only way I knew how to love anyone at the time, which was poorly, and I confess that I loved the idea of her more than who she was."

"And you had both broken your honor's word to each other by the time you had been married six months," Petya says entirely unemotionally, but Aral can see Petya's hands fighting against each other, fighting to fidget. "I can see why Ges Vorrutyer was a better-suited companion, sir. He fed your base desires; he did not hand you a son and obligation in a single package."

"It was never," Aral growls, "your fault, what we did. There is no excuse for our actions, but never, ever think that you are to blame for it."

Petya shrugs. "Yes, my lord. I had not grown an ego large enough to claim credit for the dissolution of my parents marriage and your affair with my mother's brother and my mother's suicide, but if I shall ever do, I will keep your words in mind and know that my father, who killed two men who had had sex with my mother, does not believe it to be my fault, but only and wholly his own."

Well, at least Aral has proof that Petya does remember how to talk to him like he isn't the Lord Regent. Aral wonders what Miles would do in this situation. Probably run through the room, tell them both they're being too stiff and formal, and if they're going to sling insults at each other, to at least get properly Vorishly drunk first. Miles might have a point. "I sense sarcasm," he notes calmly.

"I already offered you my resignation, sir," Petya retorts. "If you're going to put me up on charges for insubordination, you might have said that at the beginning."

"I offered you a chance to sit down, at the beginning," Aral says. "And I would prefer it if you would, and stop digging ruts into your palms with your fingernails."

Petya's hands flatten against his sides immediately. "Sir."

"To answer your question," Aral says, wondering how they got here from where they'd started, and then wonders if he could bottle this up and use it the next time he's caught in a conversation with the Escobaran ambassador, "no, to my knowledge, it has never hurt anyone's career. Simon had standing orders to make sure it was never added to the files of the men you, ah, saw socially, and it's in your file only under the highest-classification security mark. I do not have the power to destroy any rumors, but there should be no official documentation of it following them around. The reports from the ambassadors were eyes-only."

Petya's jaw clenches and Aral wonders, after all that, just what Petya has decided is too impolite to voice. "Yes, sir. Thank you, sir."

"And I understand your concerns," Aral says. "But don't sell your companions short. People will surprise you in their ability to rise to the occasion and love you no matter how difficult it may prove to be. You will find someone someday, Petya, who will surprise you with their ability to love all of you, and when you find him, I hope that you will bring him home and let me meet him."

Petya's expression says, bluntly, that he does not think that will ever happen, but he is too polite to laugh in his father's face.

"And in a week," Aral says, "the Regency will end. I will kneel and renew my oaths to Gregor and take up the position of his Prime Minister instead of his Regent. And you will be free of this political exile forced on you, and the added burden of being the Lord Regent's son. All I ask is that you simply consider that in any decisions you make."

Petya shakes his head. "I won't be free," he says, "until there is a crown prince."

"Beware that priority shift," Aral warns. "You will never find the end of it. You go from until the Emperor's majority to the time the Emperor has a son to the time the son gains his majority... when will you stop and realize that you are safe?"

"When I am," Petya says. "When I learn what safety is. I will know what I'm looking for when I find it, sir, and then I will pursue it."

"And if you never find it?" Aral asks.

"I have a younger brother," Petya says. "You have given me the gift of an heir, sir. I don't have to do what you did and enter into a marriage of requirement. You have given me that freedom, sir, and for that I thank you sincerely."

"Will you settle, then, for relief, and not look for happiness?" Aral asks.

Petya grimaces. "I am happy, sir."

"You disappoint me, Petya," Aral says softly. Petya bristles. "Not in the way you assume, but you disappoint me in your imagination. You aren't happy, you're miserable. Is this truly the most you can imagine for yourself?"

"I delight," Petya says carefully, "in family and friends. You were the one who summoned me while I was on leave to lecture me about my choices, sir. You cannot now turn around and lecture me on misusing my time, when you are the one who is misusing it."

Aral blinks. "Where _were_ you?"

"Having dinner with your father, your wife, and your son, sir," Petya says. "And not conducting myself in any manner which should concern Imperial Security."

Aral puts up his hand. "Enough." Petya's mouth sets back in that grim line. "I think this conversation has gotten beyond the both of us, and if we continue, we will manage to insult each other past any hope of further civility." _No, I think we may have already managed to do that._ Well, if his son returns to Vorkosigan House tonight, they may have hope of seeing each other in the morning and perhaps putting some of this behind them. "You have my word of honor that this will end here, if you never wish to discuss it again. And you have answered my original question truthfully." Though Aral suspects he may never stop wondering what seeds of doubts Ges had planted in Petya's mind. He certainly had opportunity for _that_. "You're dismissed, if you wish to be."

Petya salutes him exactly. "Sir," he gets out through clenched teeth, and then he leaves faster than protocol would normally allow, practically at a run.

Aral picks up one of the datachips and spins it around his fingers. In an hour, he thinks, he'll call Simon to pick these up. They're too dangerous for any common courier.

In an hour.

Or perhaps two.


End file.
